Just some tidbits: In an after screening q&a session the author said he wanted to originally cast the movie in Albania, where it would IMO be a good fit with the patriarch governed extended families being the dominant societal organisational form and blood line revenge a.k.a. besa still alive in rural parts of Albania and Kosovo.
But that region in the times of shooting of the film was not a particularly safe place for an itinerant cinematographer, so Hungary and Romania were chosen instead. This being perhaps fortunate for an intimate story of the film, it would be IMO hard to avoid a different political context, including war atrocities and mass rapings taking place in Kosovo at the time of shooting.
Still the Katalin's impulse, and a quick decision to search for her rapist, would be clearer in rural Albania, as within the gossip run partially traditional and partially already modern Romanian village. We are therefore left to our own devices to figure out her motivation during the course of the movie, where the images of dark woods and music leading us to expect some Dracula offspring or something equally sinister to jump out any minute now, do not exactly help us there.
The cinematography is really beautiful, the director commenting that it's not that difficult to be director of photography in Transylvania, where you have so many interesting things and locations to point your camera to. So many decisions about locations were made on the spot without much planning.
The movie was envisioned, shot and brought to a rough cut on a 16mm film using a director's small inheritance of 30.000 Euro. He attributes his finding a producer to finance the blow-up to 35mm to pure luck, but without this luck probably no-one would ever see this very beautiful movie. At the point of my writing the distribution contracts and all the awards brought him about a third of this investment back.
I have to mention the scene where Katalin tells the story of her being raped to her rapist and his wife, as something, that will remain in my memory for some time. Hilda Peter in the role of Katalin Varga is great. Much of the film's appeal is due to her and also other actor's performance.
But that region in the times of shooting of the film was not a particularly safe place for an itinerant cinematographer, so Hungary and Romania were chosen instead. This being perhaps fortunate for an intimate story of the film, it would be IMO hard to avoid a different political context, including war atrocities and mass rapings taking place in Kosovo at the time of shooting.
Still the Katalin's impulse, and a quick decision to search for her rapist, would be clearer in rural Albania, as within the gossip run partially traditional and partially already modern Romanian village. We are therefore left to our own devices to figure out her motivation during the course of the movie, where the images of dark woods and music leading us to expect some Dracula offspring or something equally sinister to jump out any minute now, do not exactly help us there.
The cinematography is really beautiful, the director commenting that it's not that difficult to be director of photography in Transylvania, where you have so many interesting things and locations to point your camera to. So many decisions about locations were made on the spot without much planning.
The movie was envisioned, shot and brought to a rough cut on a 16mm film using a director's small inheritance of 30.000 Euro. He attributes his finding a producer to finance the blow-up to 35mm to pure luck, but without this luck probably no-one would ever see this very beautiful movie. At the point of my writing the distribution contracts and all the awards brought him about a third of this investment back.
I have to mention the scene where Katalin tells the story of her being raped to her rapist and his wife, as something, that will remain in my memory for some time. Hilda Peter in the role of Katalin Varga is great. Much of the film's appeal is due to her and also other actor's performance.